GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, United States, a suburb of Dallas, and operates 5,830 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealan…
Full Answer
What is the GameStop stock controversy?
What Happened With GameStop Stock? July 26, 2021 by Justin Weinger Leave a Comment — In 2021, GameStop, a company known for selling video games and accessories, suddenly achieved a rapid increase...
What happened with GameStop stock?
Apr 18, 2022 · GameStop Corp. Market Cap $11B Today's Change (-6.17%) -$9.31 Current Price $141.46 Price as of April 18, 2022, 8:00 p.m. ET Euphoria might be wearing off about the company's proposed stock split.
Is GameStop stock a buy?
Jan 29, 2022 · Since January 2021, GameStop's stock price has seesawed. As of the close bell Friday, the share price was at $98.50, which is still more than what financial analysts say the company is worth. "The...
Why did GameStop stock rise?
Feb 08, 2022 · GameStop Stock Now. What happened with GameStop Stock?? The stock has erased most of its gains from the short squeeze and is currently trading at just above $100 per share. Ask any fundamental analyst out there and they’ll tell you how overpriced GameStop still is. After all, before any short squeeze occurred, the stock was trading for below $5.
Why GameStop stock went down?
Both companies reported news last week that hurt their stock price. GameStop said its quarterly loss had widened from a year ago, as the videogame retailer has sought to build up its e-commerce business and improve customer service.Dec 13, 2021
What happened to GameStop stock in 2021?
Stocks of video game retailer GameStop exploded in January 2021, effectively doubling in value on a daily basis. At the close of trading on January 27, GameStop Corporation's stock price reaching 347.51 U.S. dollars per share - or +134 percent compared to the day before.Jan 31, 2022
Who shorted GameStop?
Mohammad Hormozzadeh, a 31-year-old day trader in Brooklyn, N.Y., was one of those investors who directly registered shares. He expects the big short squeeze to hit GameStop later this year.Feb 5, 2022
Did GameStop short squeeze happen?
The trading frenzy in GameStop stock and the massive short squeeze that occurred in January 2021 dealt a 49% capital loss to the hedge fund in the first quarter of last year.Feb 12, 2022
GameStop
Since January 2021, GameStop's stock price has seesawed. As of the close bell Friday, the share price was at $98.50, which is still more than what financial analysts say the company is worth.
Robinhood
When the GameStop stock frenzy exploded, trading app Robinhood was at the center of the chaos. It was used so much that the company had to stop trading shares of GameStop in order to meet regulatory requirements.
WallStreetBets
On its FAQ page, subreddit r/WallStreetBets describes itself as a "community for making money and being amused while doing it." Users regularly roast themselves over their big stock market losses and their lack of knowledge.
Meme stocks
Though GameStop was the star of Wall Street for that short, early stretch, the long-term result of this phenomenon was the birth of a concept known as meme stocks.
What Happened with GameStop Stock?
The story gripped global markets in January 2021 and left Wall Street reeling. Looking back on the events, it’s difficult to believe what happened. A small group of retail investors on Reddit incited a direct attack on hedge funds using their own tactics.
The GameStop Stock Short Squeeze
What happened with Gamestop Stock? On January 11th, shares of GameStop saw their first real push as the stock gained 12.72% in a single session. A significant move for a stock like GameStop but nothing that really caught the market’s attention.
Other Stocks Affected
The GameStop short squeeze led to the emergence of the meme stock movement and social media trading. Subreddits like r/WallStreetBets began targeting beaten-down stocks with high short positions against them. This led to another short squeeze in June of 2021 for AMC, when it hit an all-time high price of $72.62.
GameStop Stock Now
What happened with GameStop Stock?? The stock has erased most of its gains from the short squeeze and is currently trading at just above $100 per share. Ask any fundamental analyst out there and they’ll tell you how overpriced GameStop still is. After all, before any short squeeze occurred, the stock was trading for below $5.
The GameStop short squeeze was a David versus Goliath battle
Many touted the tussle between Wall Street firms and retail investors as the David versus Goliath battle and a “democratization” of stock markets. Indeed, acting as a cohort, WallStreetBets members almost led to the demise of Melvin Capital.
What happened to GameStop stock in 2021?
GameStop stock entered 2021 on a strong note after almost tripling in 2020 amid optimism over its restructuring and the pivot towards e-commerce. However, Wall Street funds weren't too convinced about the rally and went overboard shorting the stock.
GME stock was an epic short squeeze
WallStreetBets members pounced on the opportunity and went on a buying spree. The “diamond hands” or the “HODLers” wouldn’t simply sell their shares and as a result, the short borrow fees on GameStop exploded. Left with no option, shorts had to cover their positions at a massive loss.
GameStop stock continued to plunge
GameStop stock remained volatile with a downwards bias and by the middle of February, it was trading near $40—a fall of over 90 percent from its peaks. However, the stock soared again in March and traded above $200 that month.
GameStop continues to fall in 2022
Fast forward to 2022, meme stocks aren't as popular as they were in 2021. A lot of retail investors, especially those who made huge losses on meme stocks, have been getting disillusioned with WallStreetBets.
What happens if you borrow shares and they climb in value?
If the shares you borrowed start climbing in value, then you’ll have to find more collateral to satiate your lender while waiting for the market to finally recognize the truth of your analysis. If you run out of collateral, or your lender runs out of patience, you’ll need to buy back those shares at a loss.
What is call option?
A call option is a contract that entitles its owner to buy a given stock at a specified price within a specified time period.
How to amuse yourself and potentially make money?
One way to amuse yourself — and potentially make money — would be to (1) gather with thousands of other similarly inclined people in an internet forum, (2) identify stocks that are being heavily shorted, and then (3) collectively buy up a bunch of shares in those stocks, so as to orchestrate a short squeeze.
Is GameStop a publicly traded company?
GameStop is a publicly traded company, best known for selling video-game discs and cartridges in shopping malls. This is a poor niche for a profit-seeking entity in 2021. It has never been easier to download some new lark onto your gaming console from the comfort of home.
Do hedge funds have to list put options?
Hedge funds generally go to great lengths to guard their short positions. If they use put options, for example, they buy them over the counter, which means they don’t have to list them in regulatory filings. Plotkin’s filing in the third quarter showed put options on 17 companies, many of them highly shorted names.
Is Plotkin a low key hedge fund manager?
As far as hedge fund managers go, Plotkin is considered low key. He doesn’t show up at many conferences or hobnob at society balls. Former colleagues and current investors say he’s a nice, quiet guy — not the type to make enemies. The most obvious explanation is that his positions were in some sense knowable.
How much did GameStop short sellers lose in 2021?
That accelerated the momentum even more, creating a feedback loop. As of Tuesday, short sellers of GameStop were already down more than $5 billion in 2021, according to S3 Partners.
Is Melvin Capital exiting GameStop?
Melvin Capital is also exiting GameStop, with manager Gabe Plotkin telling CNBC that the hedge fund was taking a significant loss. He denied rumors that the hedge fund will fail. The size of the losses taken by Citron and Melvin are unknown.
Is GameStop a black box?
But as elusive as the stock market may ... Across most of America, GameStop is just a place to buy a video game. On Wall Street, though, it’s become a battleground where swarms of smaller investors see themselves making an epic stand against the 1%.
Is GameStop stock going down?
The company has been losing money for years as sales of video games increasingly go online, and its stock fell for six straight years before rebounding in 2020. That pushed many professional investors to make bets that GameStop’s stock will decline even further.
Who was the owner of the Mets that bailed out Melvin?
Steve Cohen, the recent owner of the Mets, was called in to bail out Melvin to the tune of nearly $3 billion. Again, it’s the combination of the absurd Reddit-ese of stonks and the Schadenfreude of one rich man finally getting pinched that makes this story so weird and appealing. Y’all just be saying anything.
Is fundamentals more important than stock market surges?
No, not really . As any smart investor will tell you, a company’s fundamentals are a lot more important than any momentary stock-market surges or crazes. But then again, a lot of the short sellers weren’t necessarily looking at the company’s fundamentals either.
Does the internet make lone wolf types?
— has often held that the internet has made the levers of power accessible to lone-wolf types. (Yes, I am thinking, as I often do, of Blackhat, in which a rogue hacker sends up soy futures and sends the global economy into a tailspin.)
Wallstreetbets
I am sure that many of you never heard of wallstreetbets (WSB) before this GameStop saga. However, with this event, the wallstreetbets subreddit became quite famous. However, it was already active well before this event. But it has now become much more mainstream than before.
The GameStop plan
Some of the WSB investors studied the market and saw that several stocks were highly shorted by big hedge funds. This means that hedge funds were betting that these stocks would do poorly. For that, the hedge funds were selling shorts.
The first phase
We can look at the stock once the WSB investors started buying them heavily in late January 2021.
The second wave
Interestingly, after 20 days, the stock started going back up. And since that point to the middle of June, the stock has been very volatile. It is currently much higher than it was before the first wave. But it has not been higher than during the first wave.
Summary
After finding out that some stocks were heavily shorted (betting against the stock) by hedge funds, some investors from the WSB subreddit decided to make the price surge to make these hedge funds lose money. In a few days, they managed to increase the price of GameStop stock (and other stocks) very quickly.
